The modern distribution of the name differs for different spellings.
For each spelling, the prevalent countries are listed below in the order of
decreasing frequency. This is given as the number per million of each country's overall
population (followed by the actual number in brackets). The data are
taken from this source.

The estimated world-wide population for Plante (28,322)
seems to be similar to that for Plant (28,281) though, in the case of Plante,
this appears to be mainly a family that arrived in Canada from France, in
the seventeenth century, and then proliferated greatly throughout the
opportune conditions of North America.

The spelling Plant, on the other hand, remains most
frequent in its apparent homeland of England though roughly twice as many
Plants have spread widely, especially throughout the once British
Empire.

Possible links between the main English Plant family
and the living name Plante in western France are untested. Though none in
France has (as yet) been tested, the Y-DNA evidence indicates that the
French-Canadian Plante family is not genetically related down intact male
lines to the English Plant family; it is not as yet clear whether this
discontinuity arose before or after the formation of the Plant(e) name(s)
but the French name may well have arisen independently of the main English
Plant family.

No-one with the spelling Planta has yet been Y-DNA
tested. Planta might hence represent a genetically distinct family or
perhaps, unlike Plant and Plante, it might not be predominantly just one
family.

Though the various spellings of Plant-like names are
generally located in different countries, this is not true in North America.
Both of the spellings Plant and Plante co-exist in large numbers in this New
World. The following map shows the locations of living men, with each of the
spellings, who have been Y-DNA tested. Most with the spelling Plant (or
Plantt) DNA match one another (red pins) though some do not (yellow pins).
The same is true for most of those with the spelling Plante (dark blue pins)
though again some do not match their main family (light blue pins). So far,
the two genetically-distinct main families (red and dark blue pins) have
been found to correspond neatly with the two different spellings, Plant(t)
and Plante. On the other hand, it is believed that some with the spelling
Plante descend from a Plant ancestor, though no such Plante has yet come
forward to have this supposition tested.

This map was
produced with the My Maps feature of Google Maps. Futher details of the DNA
results are given elsewhere on this website. The
spelling Plant is discussed further under USA and
Plante under Canada.

In modern France, the spelling Plante is found in SW France (dark brown
pins). Fewer with the spelling Plantie are found in the same region and the
spelling Planty is found a little further to the north.

This map was produced
with the My Maps feature of Google Maps. Futher details of the data are
given elsewhere on this website.

The highest number of UK Plants in a single county in 1881
was 2408 in the county of Staffordshire. This is in the NW Midlands of
England.

This map was produced using Steve Archer's Surname Atlas CD.

The following map shows the eight UK directory districts with the highest
number of telephone subscribers called Plant, a hundred years later in 1981.
In all, there were Plants in 100 such districts. The highest fraction was
in the Stoke on Trent district, in north Staffordshire, where there were 12%
of the UK Plants. Though only eight pins are shown to indicate districts on
the map, these eight districts account for 32.4% of all UK Plants. Leaving
aside London and mid Wales, the top six districts are centred on cities
around the north west Midlands of England.

This map was produced with the My Maps feature of Google Maps. Counts of Plants in 100 Telephone Districts are described on pages 4-6 of Issue 1 of Roots and Branches.

DNA evidence that living Plants belong mostly to a single family is
described mostly elsewhere on this website.
Documentary evidence that the Plant name expanded particularly from a
homeland around the Cheshire-Staffordshire border is outlined progressively
on this webpage below.

The following map shows in particular the spread of known ancestors of
Y-DNA-matching Plants (red circles). By 1700, a main Plant family evidently
stretched from the north to the south of the county of Staffordshire, which
is identified by the darkest brown. Though not shown on this map, this main
family had already reached America (Brandford, Ct) in the seventeenth
century. To the east of Staffordshire, there are matching red circles both
in SE Leicestershire by 1716 and in NE Derbyshire (near Sheffield) by 1749
[the latter 1749 location is near the Bakewell Old House Museum, home
of the early sixteenth century Christopher
Plant].

We can accordingy consider a hypothesis that a single Plant family
ramified early, perhaps even as early as medieval times. This
presents a problem, in as much as it is often considered that the vast
majority of the medieval peasants were tied to their local plot of land
without permission to travel. There were exceptions however, such as for
the so-called fighting class, including Knights, beneath the nobility.
There was a Sir John Plant [see ca.1472-84 document] with shadowy hints
of widespread connections, as early as the times of the fifteenth-century
Wars of the Roses. Though research is ongoing, the DNA and documentary
evidence so far suggest that the main Plant family could have
spread as early as those tumultuous times from east Cheshire in the NW
Midlands of England to Ireland, as well as southwards through Staffordshire
and into Leicestershire.

Though somewhat later, the following map shows that there
were parishes with Plant records near the first and last pitched battles of
this intermittent War. Though there had been street fighting at St Albans
in 1455, the site of the first full-scale battle was in north Staffordshire
in 1459 at Bloor Heath and there are 7 Plant records for the nearby parish
of Mucklestone. In Leicestershire, not far from the concluding Battle of
Bosworth Field (1485), there are 15 Plant records in the nearby parish of
Lockington, the earliest being a 1558 burial not long after the start of
parish records. The earliest Plant records for the parish of Mucklestone
are two marriages in 1567.

Some further details concerning these 16th century records are
given here.

The homeland Plants were still mostly, in the sixteenth century,
in north Staffordshire and east Cheshire. However, the above
1538-1600 interactive map shows, by default, all parishes in England that
have one or more Plant records, with the darker blues representing more
records. By clicking on the icon in top left corner, a side menu appears.
Using this to select only those parishes with over 5 Plant records leaves
ones in Cheshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire with an outlier
in Linconshire. Changing the menu to only parishes with over 12 records
removes Derbyshire and over 24 leaves only Cheshire and north Staffordshire.
Allowing all places with more than 2 records in this time period reaches
further south through the West Midlands, into Worcestershire and
Warwickshire, and adds a few places near the south east coast of England.

The wide spread of parishes with just one or two Plant records, by
1538-1600, might imply that there were a lot of separate origins to the name
or that early Plants had already been quite mobile. Though the computer
simulations indicate that around 90% of the origins to a surname can die out
in the first few generations leading into the Black Death, we have another
way of assessing the likely mix of early families. According to DNA
evidence, a single main Plant family has grown abnormally large. Early
mobility helps to explain this, in as much as it spreads the net further
across different parishes to bring in more early Plant records to a single
family.

It has long been commented that Plant is a populous surname that ramified
early. Our DNA evidence has indicated furthermore that living bearers of
the Plant surname belong mostly to a single family. Our computer
simulations indicate that the main Plant family must have grown steadily to
attain its large size, perhaps overtaking other early Plant families such as
one in south Lincolnshire. We can moreover add that it helps to reach an
abnormally large living population, if the family comprised most of the
known Plants, even by medieval times.

We have shown that the growth of a single family to the population size
of the main Plant family is barely to be expected, even as a one in a
million statistically-unlikely event. This remains true even in the
favourable growth conditions of Staffordshire. In an earlier paper
[here],
we went on to consider possible beneficial factors, such as an early start
to the main Plant family or the surname having been ascribed subsequently to
several men of a pre-existing male-line family. In another article
[here], we showed
that, for a 90% confidence interval, achieving the DNA-derived lower limit,
needed around 20 to 50 reproductively-active male Plants in the main family
in 1401; and, around 50 to 120 in 1671.

The later date, 1671, coincides with the Hearth Tax return records though
a full set of these is not as yet readily available on line. However, as a
rough guide, 49 Plant hearth tax households have been found around the main
Plant homeland with a further 2 in West Yorkshire and 8 more in London and
Middlesex. This comparison would tend to indicate that nearly all of the
Plant hearth-tax households yet found should preferably belong to a single
family, in order to provide confidence for reaching our main-family
population targets.

The situation for 1401 is more problematic still. The known medieval
records evidently fall quite far short of those needed in 1401, for the main
single family. There could have been more Plants than we know about
[e.g. the ca.1380 Poll tax records are missing for the main Plant
homeland]. Ideally however, to reach our main Plant family targets, it
would help if we could gather together as possible of those found
and more.

If these estimations are correct, we are then left with the question of
why there were so many from a single family so early. As one possibilty, we
have that there could have been a very early start to the name.

Most contentiously, there was a Julius Planta in the Alps by 46AD and it
has been claimed [G.R.de Beer (1952) Notes and Records of the Royal
Society of London, p.8] that the modern Planta family, still found around its
noble seat of Engadine in the Swiss Alps, descends from him. That said, it
seems extremely questionable that the genetic link was intact throughout the
millennium or more from 46AD to 1139AD.

Chinon castle...

Loudun castle...

In our earlier article [here], we showed that there
was a 5% chance of reaching the lower bound of our 1401 target population if
the main Plant family began with a single man by around 1221.

There was an Eimeric de la Planta (alias de Plant') near the Angevin
homeland of the so-called Plantagenets. In 1202 he was dispossed of land at
Chinon and Loudun (1202). It is conceivable that he could, for example,
have belonged to the aforesaid Planta family and, under the feudal authority
of William Longspee (ca.1176-1226), slight variations of the Plant name
could have progressed from Normandy to England.

More generally, the main features of the distribution of early Plant
records can be explained by a Longspee-Audley feudal hypothesis. This
could have brought, from Anjou and Normandy in France, an early culture for
the Plant surname, though it seems less likely that the main Plant family
itself travelled with them. These feudal lords could have ascribed the
Plant name to their local peasants in the main Plant homeland since William
Longspée became sheriff of this homeland in 1224 and his line had
married into the local Audley family by 1244. This hypothesis then fits
well with the known distribution of the name from around the twelfth to the
fourteenth centuries. Subsequent migration could then have extended the
distribution of the Plant surname in England by around 1538-1600.

Alternatively, a rather later start with abnormally many children in the
earliest generations could have provided a robust initial boost to the
main-family population leading on from a strong basis to a large eventual
family. For this, we can wildly imagine a high status peasant, such as a
horseman, who could have left a wide scatter of the main Plant family's
seed. That would then allow us to bring together more of the known early
records for the Plant name and ascribe a large fraction of them to a single
main Plant family.

Curli seal of arms...

Plant coat of arms...

Aswell as the name, we can consider a possible culture for the Plants'
heraldry. Amongst a smatter of a few Plant records by 1538-1600, who had
reached southwards from the name's most populous homeland into Warwickshire,
there is for example a Plant record at Barford which is just 3 miles south
of Budbooke. According to Dugdale [William Dugdale, 1656,
Antiquaries of Warwickshire], the Curli family of Budbrooke
had, as their seal of arms, a label with four points in place of a bend
sinister. The main element of the Plant coat of arms is, rather
similarly, a very rare label in bend. This suggests perhaps some
shared cultural influence. However, other than Curli origins in Lower
Normandy, which can be compared with the placename le Plantis and
early Plant names there, there is nothing to suggest any particular
connection between these two surnames, Curli and Plant, from as early as the
thirteenth century.

As an extreme assumption, we can suppose that the main Plant family was
largely the only Plant family to begin with. The fraction of male-line
mismatches could then have grown steadily as a result of false paternity
events. This then requires however quite considerable mobility for the
early Plant family to link their known medieval records together.

There are a number of indications of some mobility in early Plant
records. For example in 1301 and 1312 and 1315, there is mention of John
Plonte who was a freeman of Canterbury. A freeman was not tied to
local land by his Lord. In 1352, Ralph de Stafford was involved in a
dispute concerning that James Plant and others had carried off his
goods from Wells and Wareham in Norfolk. For this, we can consider for
example the mobility of a sumpter, meaning a pack-horse man. In 1381, John
le Sumpter and Thomas Plonte are mentioned in connection with a disputed
murder at Leek. Out of identified men in the Macclesfield Court Rolls for
1349-96, fifty-six (approx 6%) had working horses and Ranulph Plont of
Rainow was one of them. Working horses could be used as pack animals and
Ranulph also had draught animals such as oxen which could be used four or
eight to a cart.[A.M.Tonkinson, Macclesfield in the Later
Fourteenth Century (Manchester, 1991) Appendix Two and p.26]
Some such Plant family sumpter, or geneat, could have left a number of quite
widely-spread progeny. This assumption could serve to bring in several
early Plant records to provide the aforementioned required robust early
times for the main Plant family's abnormally large size.

As a particularly embellished illustration of such a medieval context, we
can invent a by-name spelling Plantageneat (sic) which could have meant a
plant horseman, with plant perhaps alluding to
establishing order or planting offspring, perhaps by philandering for
example. A geneat was a peasant without a heavy commitment to sevices of
labour, whose obligations to his lord often involved riding, carrying
messages, escorting his lord, helping with the hunt and general carriage
work [Christopher Dyer, 2002, Making a living in the Middle Ages:
The people of Britain 850 to 1520, p.39]. For example in 1266,
Galfrido Plauntegenet (sic) amongst others was required to transport a
garderobe. As a geneat, he could have been entirely unrelated to the royal
so-called Plantagenet family, who evidently did not use the Plantagenet
surname until the mid fifteenth century.

Leaving aside uncertainties about Plant family relationships, there are
thirteenth- and fourteenth-century records for the name that are spread
widely throughout England and elsewhere. If we were to discount any
substantial early mobility, it would then appear that few of these early
instances went on to produce many, if any, living male-line descendants.
The likely exceptions are items 1, 5 and 11 in the following map.

Though the Plant surname went on to survive mostly around Leek, near the
Cheshire-Staffordshire border (item 11 in above map), there is also explicit
evidence that the surname was hereditary (rather than being just a
single-generation by-name) near Bolingbroke in south Lincolnshire by 1279
(item 5).

There are also early records around Bath in Somerset (item 8) by 1275 and
it is explicit that these were hereditary by 1329. It is unclear whether
the name of the manor of La Plantland, here, interacted with the Plonte
surname. The exact location of this manor is not known though it is presumably
near other places listed with it in a 1310 record (yellow diamonds in the
map below) which are in south Wales just across the Bristol Channel from
occurrences of Plonte.

It could be only accidental that a feudal Longspee-Audley connection appears to link
item 8 to items 5 and 11 on the preceding map and also to other early
occurrences of the Plant surname elsewhere. We can conjecture that these
two intermarrying powerful families, Longspee and Audley, were instrumental
in transmitting an idea for the Plant name, or perhaps even inducing a
transfer of people called Plant between separate localities. Considering
this early feudal effect as the only influence driving the name's
distribution could well be over-simplistic. As with most evidence for this
early, supporting documentary evidence of a connection between
geographically distant Plant records is slight. It is at least uncertain
whether all occurrences of the same name belonged to a single family.
Though the DNA evidence and computer simulations allow that the large number
of living Plants could be more than one family, the number of different
families could have been few and a dominant single family from early times
helps towards explaining why there is now an abnormally large main Plant
family.

It may be noted for item 10, for example, that this involves a
1352 complaint against 31 people, with 26 different second names, for the
removal of goods from ex-Warenne land in north Norfolk, following the demise
of the last Warren earl. Seven of these surnames (or by-names) are found
shortly after at item 11 in available Court Rolls for Macclesfield Hundred
in east Cheshire: Plont, Halle, Kent, Knyght, Lovell, Nichol, and Batiller
(or Bataille) [see 1352 document mentioning
James Plant]. This suggests a connection between these places but leaves
some degree of uncertainty about why.

The main Plant family evidently originated (or perhaps arrived) at item 11 on the above map, which is at the northernmost
boundary of Staffordshire with Cheshire.

In east Cheshire, in the Macclesfield court rolls (1349-1391),
there is for example a 1373 mention of Thomas Plont at the Black Prince's
Midgley vaccary, on the Cheshire-Staffordshire border. This location, just
across from Lud's Church, has been associated by Professor R. W. V.
Elliott with the contemporary poem Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight.

In the 1950s, Professor Elliot suggested, for example, that the country surrounding Dieulacres Abbey's grange at Swythamley was the scene of the hunting episodes and that the climax of the poem took place at Lud's Church to the north-east of Swythamley. He also suggested that the beheading of John de Warton at Leek in 1380 may have inspired part of the poem. A Thomas Plont, possiby the same Thomas Plont as at the Midgely vaccary, was involved with this beheading [see British History Online and 1381 document].

At those times, just a few milles to the north, nearer the de Warenne
seat at Poynton and near another apparent site of the Black Prince's three
vaccaries, the Macclesfield Court Rolls mention three generations of
moderately wealthy Plants, free tenants at Rainow: Ranulph Plont, John Plont
snr, and John Plont jnr. A John Plant junior appears also in a 1445 list of
Knights, Gentlemen and Freelhoders of Macclesfield Hundred [see also
ca.1472-84 document for Sir John
Plant].

The Darlaston Plant family can also be associated with a 1471 document mentioning a husbandman Thomas
Plant of Darlaston in league with a gentleman of the Fitton family of
Gawsworth, which is south of Macclesfield in Cheshire in the main Plant
homeland (see also 1445
document). There is also a later document for a Plant with property
at Darlaston in 1614.

The clustering of Plant Hearth Tax records (ca.1670) around the main
Plant homeland of east Cheshire and north Staffordshire is shown in the
following map.

This map is taken from Figure 2 of: John S. Plant and Richard E. Plant (April 2012) The Plant Controversy, Journal of One-Name Studies, Volume 11, Issue 2, pp. 8-9. More detail about some of the Hearth Tax data is given on pages 17-20 of this article published in Issue 30 of Roots and Branches.

The largest green circles above represent the largest numbers of Plant
Hearth Tax records and these are in Totmonslow Hundred (including Leek
parish) of north Staffordshire and, across the border to the north, in
Macclesfield Hundred of east Cheshire. Though not every county has been
considered, there are also a few to the east of Staffordshire in Derbyshire
and to the west into Shropshire, as well as further south in Staffordshire.
The placements in Staffordshire at Pyrehill, Cuttlestone and Offlow are not
precise as these are only central locations in these large Hundreds of
Staffordshire.

Though the isolated occurence in Shropshire, at Bradford, curiously
coincides with the Audley family's Red Castle, in keeping with the many
successes of the Longspee-Audley
hypothesis, this particular location has not as yet been found as
showing up in early Plant records.

As before, the brown shading in the above map represents the proportion
of Plants in each county by 1881. More detail of the 1881 distribution is
shown in the following maps which are for smaller districts defined by
legislation for Poor Law Unions. At this time, the highest number of Plants
occurs for the District of Stoke on Trent (immediately to the west of the
Cheadle District labelled below) but, as a fraction of the overall
population, the Plants skirt around slightly to the east of Stoke on Trent
and reach further south west into the Newport District.

Further to the south in these maps, Dudley lies between Wolverhampton and Birmingham and there is a slight shift to Stourbridge, immediately to the south of Dudley when the proportion of Plants, rather than the actual numbers, is considered.

Models for early origins to the English Plant surname can be
considered in terms of two broad possible contexts:

local derivation near the main Plant homeland (item 11 in above map), with an
interplay of French and Celtic (cf. Welsh) culture; and,

cultural
influence with migration from afar: for example, there is early evidence for
the Planta name in the Alps (item
1) which can be associated with a persisting Romano-Celtic
culture.

One simple interpretation of the Plant surname is that an early name form
de la Planta(item
2) might have meant from la Planta region of the Alps (item 1) or it might have related to
some other suitably-named place. However, though the DNA sub-clades suggest
continental origins for the ancestral male line of main Plant family, this
could have been in millennia before this family's surname first formed.
Restricting ourselves to more certain migrants around the times of surname
formation, the name could have been transmitted through the feudal lords of
the Plant peasants. In the twelfth- to fourteenth-century Longspé-Audley hypothesis, the name
colud have begun with the French meaning of planté and the
administrators of these feudal lords could have applied this `planted place'
meaning to a family of local peasants living near one.

The surname origins of the main Plant family can be set in the
fourteenth-century (if not earlier) context of two intermingling cultures
around the main Plant homeland: one with emphasis on primogeniture, with
associated rules about the legitimacy of the male heir; and, the other
perhaps more akin to the freer medieval marital arrangements of the Welsh
(cf. item 7 near 11). In
the Welsh cuture, polygyny was permissible and inheritance could pass to all
recognised sons including `illegitimate' ones. One might accordingly
consider the Welsh meaning `children' of plant, which has a Celtic
pronunciation cland, in keeping with possible ideas for a large
male-line family or `clan'. An alternative possibility is that Plant could
have meant from the `planting enclosure', perhaps relating to the
contemporary vaccary of the Black Prince in east Cheshire (item 11) or perhaps it related to some
earlier `planted place' in Leek parish near the Roaches.

The prominent Rocks dominating much of Leek parish - the Roaches - often
have their own distinct micro-climate, sometimes bleak in snow and low cloud
in the winter and sometimes peeping through rain clouds to the clear blue
sky above. The recently (2016) discovered Iron-Age Leekfrith gold torcs,
found planted in a hillside, are being considered to have been buried simply
to hide them or perhaps as a votive offering in this rather `mystical'
place.

An interplay of two intermingling cultures, in the main
fourteenth-century Plant homeland, is evident in the contemporary
literature...

This context of the main Plant homeland is exemplified, in a
poetic frame of mind, by French courtly chivalry invading more local
customs. For example, the parish of Leek in the main homeland is said to
derive its name from the Welsh (llech) for `slab', `stone', or `rock'
(sometimes confused with Old Scandinavian Loekr meaning brook) though its
distinctive rocks are now called The Roaches (French), presumably because of
the invading French culture.

In the early fourteenth-century illustration alongside, a courtly Knight
delivers a lady from a wild-man (French
tradition).

Celtic tradition is personified by the Green Knight of the
contemporary so-called Pearl poet (see, for example, a 2001 article from Series 1 of the Plant
Journal) who is thought to have lived in the main Plant homeland
which was astride the border between Leek in north Staffordshire and east
Cheshire in the north-west midlands of England. In the late
fourteenth-century epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the
Green Knight challenges Gawain to a beheading contest and arranges for
Gawain's temptation (Celtic traditions) to test his chivalry (French
tradition).

The presentations of these initial assessments are gradually being
upgraded with the advent of more easily accessed records on the web along
with improved mapping software.

Initial assesments of IGI records assembled on microfiche gave raise to a distribution map of pre-1700 Plants (as
recorded in the 1984 IGI) with a primary cluster in Cheshire and
Staffordshire, as well as a secondary cluster in Lincolnshire. The IGI
data, for 50 year intervals between 1600 and 1850, also suggested an early
migration from Cheshire further south into Staffordshire, as presented as:-

It was evident from these records that, by around the times of the
Industrial Revolution, the secondary Plant cluster in Lincolnshire had
diminished. For the primary cluster, it appeared that there was a migration
from the rural areas of east Cheshire and north Staffordshire, to such
nearby industrial centres as Stoke-on-Trent and Wolverhampton (both in
Staffordshire), as well as to Manchester (Lancashire), Birmingham,
Sheffield (south Yorkshire), and London.

Studies of the more recent distribution of the name
in the UK showed it to be smeared out around Staffordshire, with some
migration to other places besides:-

The DNA evidence
indicates that the English Plant name belongs mostly to an abnormally large
single family, suggesting that the name is largely a single-ancestor surname
(with some mismatching descent through female links).